I didn’t realize that was really an issue. Must be part of why University at Buffalo makes a big deal of their Finish in Four program. https://advising.buffalo.edu/fif/
My two kids went to Yale and Swarthmore. Both graduated in 4 years. Among their friends, the only ones who did NOT graduate in 4 years took a semester or two off for medical reasons, a gap semester, etc., not because of any issues with not being able to graduate on time. I think that the problems discussed here are far more prevalent at public universities. Now it’s not to say that there wasn’t a class or two that my son wanted to take in his major that he wasn’t able to because of class sizes, but it wasn’t a required class; it was an elective.
30,000 undergrads at UW – my kid was just one, and his extended friend group was maybe another 50+ kids – so experience, not data. Our experience was, no problem graduating, if desired in 4 years. Some kids stayed longer because, well, it’s an amazing place to go to school, so why rush out? If you can add another major or certificate as a reason to stay and persuade your family to pay for some extra credits with the promise that you will work to pay for room and board, maybe you take a super senior year. From the kids we knew who paid attention to College and Major graduation requirements, there was no obstacle to getting through in 4 years. That being said, if kids switched from one College to another within the University, or add a major from a different College and did not meet with an advisor (whom, anecdotally, were always readily available for my kid) - they may have had a vague sense they were on track and were then surprised to discover there was a mandatory breadth or other requirement they missed. The online and in-person resources at UW for the College of Letters and Science were very detailed and useful so, if a student made the effort to check, they would know exactly what requirements and credits were left, every step of the way.
I do think there is more institutional monitoring at small, private schools where students often have to meet their advisor in person every semester before registering. Depending on the larger, private school, there may be more or less of that. The big flagships work easily for the highly motivated, self directed kid who will identify and pursue the resources needed to accomplish their goal. But for the wanderer who doesn’t have a firm hand checking on their progress, there may be some uncomfortable realizations as the 4th year draws to a close.
My son had many AP credits and graduated in 3 years at state school.
Some of this is major dependent. Although the university would love everyone to graduate in 4 years they say engineering will be a 5 year trek. Unless you start out immediately with the plan it could take even longer.
Even eons ago it was possible to miss a class in sequence which almost guaranteed an extra year.
I have a kid who graduated in 4 years, 8 semesters, no extra summers. She didn’t have any AP or DE credits. None. She hadn’t taken calculus or AP physics so started the sequence as a freshman. They gave her a list of classes for her major (civil eng) and she took them. The only thing she did out of sequence was she dropped one class (either English or civics) one semester so had to make it up in another. Most semesters she took 16 credits and that worked out fine.
I have another who has jumped all over the place. She will graduate in 8 semesters, but took one off in sophomore year so is a semester ‘late’ in graduating. She did study abroad where she could only take 12 credits. She did have 3 credits of AP credit. She needed a math class so took that this summer, and threw in 2 additional history classes to make this fall semester a little easier. She has plenty of credits, just need a few specific courses to graduated.
So no, not all kids have a ton of AP credits to transfer in. I’m not a big AP fan as I don’t think they are ‘just like college.’ I find it ironic that kids scurry to take as many AP classes as they can to get into top 20 colleges and then those same colleges don’t give them much credit for these courses that are ‘just like college’ because they aren’t just like college to the top 20. Harvard and Yale actually think they do a better job teaching Human Geography than Washington High School in Kansas City MO and MIT thinks it does a better job in teaching calc and physics than Lincoln HS in Tuscon, AZ. MIT expects you to have taken those physics and calc classes, but they aren’t giving college credit for them.
There seems to be a different 4 year graduation rate at private versus public. When looking at top OOS public schools, we thought about the likelihood of year 5 due to scheduling issues, especially for the # of credits and specific required courses in an engineering curriculum. When adding the 20K or 30K to in-state tuition, a possibility of year 5 and the lost income from working full-time in year 5, I just threw up my hands and said ‘only 4 years of private tuition’. Anything above that needs to be financed completely by our kids. I have been impressed with the private advising system to guarantee a 4 year graduation including major and any declared minors. It still leaves room for three 13 week internships before job searching senior year. A cohesive class entering in year x and graduating 4 years later creates a wonderful community.
States with the best K-12 programs, ranking high in K-12 usually means the reverse for the pubic college education system.
Most bachelors degree programs are designed to last four years, there’s just a lot of places in the system that can derail that.
Are the general education (core course) requirements clear and easy to understand?—one of my kids had very straightforward gen eds, the other has much more confusing and hard to map out gen eds. That kid had to be more careful with planning to make sure it was all covered
Are the major requirements clear, easy to understand?
Are there rigid course sequences, like in engineering?—getting derailed early in a sequence can really delay things—not getting into a class or struggling and having to retake a class
Are the required courses offered frequently enough? —more of a problem at smaller schools, in smaller majors.
Is there advising? Who does the advising? How good is the advice?—my two kids at (not elite) private U’s have professors for advisors. One had her advisor leave the school, so she was getting advising from the department head for a while. A friend’s kid the same age at a large public U in the respected honors college has had over a dozen advisors and counting in two years.
Is there enough space in required classes? Overcrowding is a problem at some schools.
How flexible to substitution is the curriculum? —if stats for Econ majors isn’t offered this semester, can stats for math majors be substituted? How hard is it to get approval to do so?
How rigid and complex is the beauraucracy? —we know a kid who was mistakenly dropped from the wrong class, and it took a ton of work at the large school to get this major problem corrected. Parents had to get involved. The add drop process seemed unnecessarily complicated-the mistake never should have happened but it did. My kids at smaller schools seem to have an easier time finding that right person who knows how to solve the inevitable problem that arises.
And then there’s all the things students can do to delay things. Misunderstand requirements, change majors, add a double major, fail or drop a class, get sick, study abroad and have course credit not transfer as expected, etc, etc.
Yet still lots of kids manage to graduate in four years. We made sure our kids knew going in how graduation requirements work. How major and general education requirements work. That they would be responsible to understand and keep track of it all. We also were clear about what we could afford, and what we couldn’t (in our case, “you need to finish before your scholarship expires”). They both had a bunch of AP credit, They’ve really not needed much help from us navigating the system at their schools. We just ask questions around class registration time. Even the friend’s kid at the big U in a sequenced major who has run into assorted roadblocks is still on track to graduate on time—with the addition of a summer school course.
Don’t count on AP credits to shorten time in school. Our S entered his private U with the max 60 credits due to 14 APs he scored 5s on plus one College course he took in HS. He still took 4 years to graduate with EE degree. All the credits just allowed him to register earlier and get out of a few gen ed requirements.
He COULD have maybe graduated a term early but we told him not to bother and stay with his peers and enjoy his last year. He took courses of interest including sailing and building a receiver and geology and had a great SR year.
Both my kids were at private colleges and graduated in four years. The younger one’s college only gave gen ed credit for 5 APs, and he got only some Gen Ed plus one year of Arabic credit for his year in Jordan. At one point senior year it looked like he was going to have to take a course he didn’t want to and not take a course he did want to in order to graduate on time, but in the end he managed to get all the credits he needed and the fun courses as well. Older son I think should have been able to graduate early, but he said with CS sequence it really wasn’t possible.
Actually, MIT does give credit and advanced placement for 5 scores on AP calculus or both AP physics C exams.
In other words, they will not hold you back if you know the material, even if you learned it in a high school setting that is very different from a college setting.
@KLSD I wonder whether that’s because State’s with the best K-12 programs are a reflection of families having more money, and families that have more money might be more accepting of their kids taking longer to graduate.
This might be interesting to some. Sacred Heart University in Fairfield CT used to have (I’m not sure if it still does) a program whereby kids could graduate in 3 years by going to school over the summer. The school intentionally designed this program because they were concerned about the cost of higher education. An administrator there explained it to me that they looked at how much money kids could make over the summer and compared it to how much they would make after graduating in what would have been their 4th year of school, and it seemed clear that there was a significant financial advantage to kids to finish up in 3 years. The school devoted advisors to ensure the kids were on track and ensured that any scheduling conflicts could be worked around.
This question was high on my radar as my kid liked the big state flagships. I would add to the discussion to definitely research the graduation rate specific for your child’s major and talk to that department directly. We were told that if there was a scheduling conflict required for the major, to contact the department and they could override the advisor and get a student into the class.
This is one of the major benefits of being admitted to an Honors College at large state universities–priority registration which leads to on time graduation.
Two of my college grad kids went to small private schools, two to a large public/not flagship. All graduated in 4 years with no problem. I was actually surprised/impressed that my public u. kids had to meet with/make their schedule with an advisor every semester to make sure they were on track. Each of them had about one semester AP credits, and chose to take a lighter schedule/do internship for credit instead of graduating early. Kid#5 is currently at another big public u. Same deal–every semester meeting/checking on the grad. requirements. This kid had a year or more of AP/DE credit, and is choosing to triple major instead of graduating early. Has 3 advisors, one for each major! My kids seem to be getting more advice/attention than I did at a medium-sized public back in the 80s.( Yep, I made some dumb mistakes with my schedule, which probably would’ve been prevented if I’d had today’s technology back then. Or an advisor. We had no departmental advisors. Just general advisors for kids who were struggling or couldn’t decide on a major. ) My public u. kids haven’t run into any scheduling problems–yet. Lucky that needed courses or alternates have always been available. My impression is that these schools want kids to graduate ASAP. I guess that changing majors or having to drop/repeat courses is the most common cause of taking extra time to graduate. Or being in a heavy load/co-op major like engineering.
S was missing a chemistry class. I kept bugging him about it and he finally got an advisor to waive it because of all his AP credits (none of which included chemistry). I was just relieved S graduated with his class and with a job in hand!
It was mentioned above that 5 years at a public vs 4 years at a private still may be cheaper. True, but there can also be an opportunity cost of one less year of “real job earnings”, 1 year later for starting career progression, and 1 year later for starting retirement savings.
We were surprised that when S was hired, his new employer said he’d give S two years of seniority for his two summer internships—one at public U and the other at NASA.
That was a happpy surprise but it still was over a year from his accepting his formal job offer SR year until he was given orientation and allowed to start work!
Raising the 4 year graduation rate is a top priority where I work and the school has been chipping away at it. Many factors are involved, but I have a hard time believing that any college would want to keep students from graduating by design.
The high cost of attendance may give students more incentive to graduate on schedule, or the cost may apply a selection effect on students (i.e. students come from wealthier families and hence less needing to work part time to afford school)… Also, private colleges are probably more selective on average than public colleges, and probably do not enroll as many students with outside obligations (work and family) that can slow their progress.
I think they often have more attentive advising, too.